Normalisation
File normalisation for international playout
Anonymous
Broadcasting & Media Services
Emotion’s client is an international broadcasting and media services company that had been tasked with designing a playout centre for a private broadcaster.
Requirements
The European broadcaster receives files from a host of different suppliers in a variety of formats. They need a tool to normalise all received files to a consistent format before they’re loaded onto the playout servers.
More than 10 different combinations of file configurations can be supplied to the client, with up to 8 channels containing a mix of SD and HD, and some Dolby E encoded tracks. The playout server requirement is for one format consisting of PCM stereo on 1&2 and on 5&6, and Dolby E stereo on 3&4 and on 7&8.
The Solution
- Engine
- 10.02
Emotion Systems provided an Engine with 3 Emotion Signal Processors. The system was provided with loudness, Dolby E encoding, and track mapping modules.
Engine is used to move the original audio onto the correct channels, and to replicate tracks to additional channels as required. Engine automatically detects whether Dolby E is present and, if not, it Dolby E encodes the PCM tracks. All audio is loudness corrected to EBU R128.
Challenges & Customisations
The original assumption was that content would be provided with 8 channels but, in reality, this was not always the case. The conditional workflow module was added to the Engine application to deal with the varying number of channels provided.
Engine has been integrated into the broadcaster’s content delivery workflow and technical infrastructure. Their MAM system assigns each source file to one of the configured Engine workflows to provide a completely automated process.
Comment from Emotion Systems
...improved performance processing.
“This was the first deployment of Engine and, after six years, the client is still a loyal customer and continues to benefit from updated releases with improved performance processing.”